268 COMMON GOAT, 
the expressions of the ancient pastoral poetg, goats 
were in their days tended in Greece and Italy with 
not less care than sheep. In Norway, goats are 
numerous, notwithstanding their inability to suffer 
extreme cold. Nay, in that northern climate, they 
thrive so prodigiously, that, as Pontoppidan re- 
lates, not less than seventy or eighty thousand raw 
hides are annually exported from Bergen. Even 
Iceland is “ not destitute of goats ; but that 
island is so scantily supplied with trees, shrubs, 
and the other plants on which these animals de- 
light to browse, that they are not numerous nor 
thriving there. Attempts have been made to in- 
troduce this animal into Greenland ; and as the 
goat, when it cannot obtain its favourite ve- 
getable food, refuses not to eatt dried fish, it is 
found capable of subsisting even in that barren 
and dreary region. Our common domestic goat 
is not, indeed, a native of America ; but with the 
other chief domestic animals of the Old World, 
has been conveyed thither by the settlers from Eu- 
rope. In South America, these animals have muD 
tiplied prodigiously ; but the climate of Canada 
has been found too severe. Africa, India, Ma- 
dagascar and the Oriental islands all afford this 
animal. Our voyagers to the South Seas found 
abundance of goats in the island of Juan Fernan- 
dez ; which, though in consequence of living in 
regions where they are almost totally sequestered 
from human intercourse, they were become in 
their character and dispositions absolutely wild, 
yet were of the same variety with the common 
domestic goat of Europe. In Batavia, the Dutch 
colonists have, among their other domestic animals, 
herds of goats. 
A small island between Bonavista and Mayo is 
related by an English voyager who visited these, 
the Cape dp Verd islands, and the coast of Guinea, 
